In February 2011, me and my boyfriend Nick went on an journey to India, Nepal and Australia that ended up lasting two years. We travelled, worked and learned a lot about each other, other cultures, our passions and the importance of choosing your own destiny. Writing home in Dutch at the time, these stories haven’t travelled further than our closest friends and family. But from now on, you also get the chance to experience what it’s like to leave home in search for adventure…
I got shot(s)!
December 2010
Looking like criminals
We’ve booked the ticket for the start of our trip and have now leaped into the paper world of travelling.
Visa for starters. Before doing that, Nick had to get a new passport first, as most countries require the passport to be valid 6 months after leaving the country. We also took our time to shoot some new official photos and tried hard to look as least as criminal then we normally do, of course. With all the strict photo-rules that was actually quite hard. No smiling, no hair in your face, no funny hats… we just have to hope really hard they let us cross all the borders. Slight chance.
Don’t let them know you read books!
Getting the visa for Australia was a piece of cake by the way. Online and within about 10 minutes they welcomed us into the country. For India and Nepal, it was a different story. Especially India had some strange visa regulations I never heard of. You aren’t allowed to come if you’ve ever worked in the army or police and if you have anything to do with media, such as a journalist, photographer, printer or simply working at a PR company or publishers. I wouldn’t even tell them you like reading, just to be sure.
We’ve decided not to eat beef for the rest of the month, just to make the Indian gods like us and will hand us that visa. You never know, right?
And then we got shot
Apart from the paper work, we had our shots at a travel clinic. A nice lady (but who would’t be nice if you knew you were going to hurt someone a bit later anyway?) told us all about all the different ways going abroad could possibly get us killed. I got 2 shots and Nick 3 (I had one a couple of years ago that’ll last me for about 10 years, yeah!). Because of a lack of a decent breakfast and the flue, Nick was just in time to grab the table edge before passing out and he spend the rest of the week under a blanket on the couch, where I brought him herbal tea and extra hugs. Preparing a trip is not something to take lightly, obviously.
For India and Nepal, we got a DTP and Hepatitis A shot. And because we stay longer than 2 weeks, we added typhus to the glamorous collection too. We were looking for a fourth disease to make a quartet, but for Malaria, we didn’t even get pills this time. Long trousers, sleeves and lots of DEET (read: poison) should be enough apparently.
If you’re real quiet, you can hear the mosquitoes fall over from laughter.
We’ve also stocked up on a first aid kit, paracetamol, stuff to calm our bowels, ORS-salt against dehydration, anti histamine/pain/nausea and other crap things, so we’re sure that our trip will be a blast. Although, with our luck, we’ll probably get crushed by a holy cow, or get our heads stuck in between temple doors, but hey. You can’t prepare for everything! Keeps it exciting, I guess.
So, our preparations are in full swing as you can see. We’re starting to think that we’ve done so much already that we might as well go, while we’re at it…
spoiler alert.
to be continued…
Any questions? Let me know! Will you join me again next week for another expat story?
The post Expat Life Australia – Flashback #3 ‘Criminal and Shot’ appeared first on The Travel Tester.